Over the past few days, 20 inches of snow fell on my little town. As a result, we have been stuck in the house for about two and a half days. Of course, we had to stock up on food, snacks, and drinks. I normally drink quite a bit of Coke. In an attempt to save a little bit of money, my husband and I bought a SodaStream a few months ago. And we love it. For those of you that don't know, SodaStream is a machine that lets you make your own carbonated beverages. We bought the Genesis soda maker, which came with the machine, a carbonator (a CO2 tank), a bottle, and a sample pack of flavors. Once you put the carbonator into the machine, you use the bottle (filled with regular water) to make carbonated water. Then you add in your favorite flavor. I am very fond of their Cola flavor. But SodaStream makes a lot of other flavors: Pink Grapefruit, Kool-Aid Cherry, Dr Pete (the Dr Pepper knock-off), Orange Soda...the list goes on. You can mess around with how much carbonation you add to water and how much flavoring you add to the carbonated water until you find a combination you like. (We prefer 5 "buzzes" of carbonation and a full cap of flavoring for the cola.)

However, you don't NEED to stick to SodaStream's flavors. There are some recipes out there for making your own soda syrup or you can buy them from someplace like Pittsburgh Soda Pop. We haven't tried them out yet but I am really looking forward to buying some new flavors, specifically the black cherry flavor.

I know I should stop drinking soda. But I think this is a 'healthy' alternative to store bought Coke or Pepsi. I love my SodaStream.